Like a shadow in the night Yoto’s name and logo has been removed from the branding of the Carnegie Medals.
From:
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Back in 2022 news broke that Yoto had become the primary sponsor for the Carnegie & Kate Greenaway Medals and they would henceforth be known as the Yoto Carnegie & Kate Greenaway Medals. Then in September the UK library community was blindsided by the news that Kate Greenaway’s name was being dropped from the Medal that had borne her name since 1955 and henceforth the awards would be known collectively as The Yoto Carnegie Medals.
What had been billed as a long-term partnership (but in reality only three years) between The Carnegie Medals and Yoto Play is now over.
The url http://.yotocarnegies.co.uk now redirects to https://carnegies.co.uk/ and Yoto is gone completely from the Carnegie Medals Partners and Sponsors page. You can view a previous version of this page courtesy of the Wayback Machine here.
I had heard through a couple of contacts that there had been some unhappiness on Yoto’s side about the sponsorship deal, but nothing ever officially came to light so I shrugged it off as possible teething issues in the partnership.
In this era of shortfalls in funding on a national and international level, sponsorship is often a necessity, but as I have previously written, I (and many others) feel that dropping Kate Greenaway was a grave misstep. Furthermore, turning the medals into basically an advertisement for a for-profit organization cheapened them somewhat and pushed the library workers, who, since the beginning had judged and championed the awards further into the shadows.
I do not know what the future holds for the Carnegie Medals, or which organization (if any) shall assume the mantle of Headline Sponsor, or if indeed there will be a headline sponsor going forward, but I will continue watching with interest.
